Darkest Dreams, let's talk about my first published game EVER! part 2

Hello again everybody, your silly indie guy here again, with another post about the story behind the making of my game, where were we? wait a sec lemme check where we left last time...

Oh so we were talking about where I left the game, let me continue,
so after leaving the game in the dust, I was going on with my life at the university, after we started to take the C programming language subject, I thought that was my moment to brag about my dev skills, so I started talking about the game I was making here and there, until everyone got curious to actually see what was the game...

So after showing the game to some of my friends and letting them try the few levels that it had, they actually enjoyed it, and pushed me to keep working on it, but I was already too busy with my life so I didn't care much...

• So how did I pick the project and blow off the dust again?

After the university ended, I got back home from the dorms, and decided to play games all day long, as I really missed doing so, after some days I got bored and started to see some indie game making stuff, I couldn't resist but to join some groups on facebook about indie game making and these stuff, got my game on the phone, recorded a footage of what I got, explained to the people in the group here about my story, and I got  A LOT of support from them (thanks to every single one of them), thanks to them I got a lot of my motivation back, got the engine installed again and started to work on the game again, after the course of a week, I got a really good looking game (at least for me) and a fully functional engine, it took me a good 2 months to finish the whole project...

• The obstacles I encountered, and how I overcame every single one of it!

So we all know, we encounter problems a lot during game development , sometimes you stick with a bug for days, so let me list some of the problems I encountered and how I overcome every one of it :

• first problem : so the first one was actually scaling for the huge amount of android devices out there, it was a real headache for me, the problem here isn't how to implement it, it was the fact that I was already 95% done with the project when I started to look into it, and the fact that the engine I used (Game Maker Studio) doesn't offer much help in that field.

       how did I solve this ?

       well seeing that I was almost done I had no choice other than what I have done now, I made the game with a 16:9 resolution which is the most used ratio nowadays, and used full scale option, which will basically scale the game to fit any screen, and I think you already guessed that the game will not actually look it's best on devices that has a ratio different from 16:9, so that wasn't a really good solution, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do...

• second problem : lack of ideas. Yes, that is a real thing, you sometimes just reach a certain point where you find yourself out of ideas, you sit there, try to squeeze you brain but nothing works.

       how did I solve this?

Whenever you find yourself in that place, trust me, you need to take a serious break, the thing I did was taking several breaks between working days, you can't believe how much this will help, just go out, forget about sitting in front of that pc tapping on that keyboard all day, go let the sun and people see you, take a walk, talk to people and friends, play some games if you want to get some ideas, try to totally forget about your game, come back to it after one day and see the result, it works like magic, ideas will flood your head, trust me.

• third problem : losing motivation again

this will happen a lot, it's a real thing in indie dev industry, you just find yourself demotivated to continue thinking you're gonna fail, always!

    how did i solve this ?

well, that's a serious thing in here so listen good, losing motivation is okay and not okay at the same time, try not to lose it, always keep your motivation high, and work with your heart and soul, pour everything you have into your beautiful game... To talk for real, what I do is read about indie biggest successes and just imagine myself instead of them, it's amazingly beautiful, keep that in your mind : you will always find success... But on the other hand, do not get your hopes too high just yet, you need to work hard for that, you're not going to reach the stars from your first game, and you're not going to get rich either, keep that in your mind and don't let it take away your motivation and energy, Rovio failed like 30 times before they found success with angry birds And I just had a good conversation with David Reichelt today too, he's the man behind Color switch, it took him 13 years to finally achieve what he achieved today and that's something of what he told me :

if I can do it so can all of you guys. The only difference between any of us is how we think.

He inspired me a lot today and I hope I can achieve my dreams one day, and I hope you guys do as well :)

Ending words :

That was my journey making my game, I'm really happy to be in that position that not too many people got to reach, you do not know the satisfaction of pushing that publish button until you actually try it, so keep working to make that happen, Always Remember, motivation is key, and success will come no matter what, but you gotta keep at it, you'll find it one day for sure...

Thanks SO MUCH for reading, I hope you guys didn't get annoyed by my silly person, hope you have the best of luck with your projects, see you next time :)

 sincerely your indie dev friend REDA